News - About IRC

News from IRC, such as announcements of new publications and activities and results from advisory work and projects.

IRC opens its first office outside The Netherlands in Ghana

On Friday 3rd February 2012, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre celebrated the official opening of its office in Accra, Ghana. This was an historic event for IRC, as this is the first office IRC has established outside The Netherlands since its foundation in 1968. The office will be led by Mrs Vida Duti, the country director for Ghana.

The outgoing Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing (MWRWH) in Ghana, the Honourable Alban Sumana Bagbin (MP), led the opening ceremony by acknowledging the contribution of IRC towards the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector in the country, in terms of both technical and knowledge assistance.

Dutch international cooperation minister Ben Knapen has announced his intention to continue to help finance the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre for the next five years with a contribution of 10 million euros. He was speaking at a meeting with Dutch water sector representatives, where he presented the plans outlined in his policy letter ‘Water for Development’.

Philanthropedia has listed the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre as one of the 15 top international WASH non-profits. IRC is ranked 4^th behind WaterAid, Water for People and UNICEF.

“Water and sanitation improvement good for economic development”

“In ten places in South Africa we could hear people talk, a group of women who told how they fought for sanitation here and groups that were starting to make money out of looking after sanitation. The local stories we produced were used by Mvula Trust to push for a greater focus on the message that the most important result from water and sanitation improvement is poverty reduction and economic development”. Dick de Jong looks back at the revolution in approaches and technologies in communication he has seen in his 30-year career with IRC in an interview with Peter McIntyre in The Hague on 13 October 2011.

Dick’s second lesson is: “We have to combine international newsletter stuff with making sure that voices from communities are heard at country level. In the past we had development demonstration programmes and we brought community voice from those programmes to the district level and to the national level. It has to be like that so that whatever we do on advocacy is evidence based.”

Assessing sanitation service levels article published in Sanitation Matters

Assessing Sanitation Service levels: A New Approach is the article by Alana Potter, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, that was published in: Sanitation Matters, Issue 2, 2011.

IRC in Stockholm

New IRC functionalities and other activities at 2011 Stockholm World Water Week.

IRC elected in Sanitation and Water for All Steering Committee

IRC, represented by Ms. Erma Uytewaal, has been elected by the Research and Learning Constituency partners to represent the group on the Steering Committee of the Sanitation and Water for All global partnership.

IRC at AfricaSan 3

Sustainable financing, sanitation options and aid effectiveness are among the key themes IRC and partners will flag at the AfricaSan 3 conference in Kigali, Rwanda from 18 to 22 July 2011. Also included are sessions and trainings during and after the conference. On our exhibition stand products and services relevant for Africa will be showcased.

IRC at WASH Conference 2011 in Brisbane

Some 224 conference delegates from over 100 organisations in 40 countries participated in the WASH Conference 2011 in Brisbane, Australia. The common theme was sustainability. The conference was unique in that four areas of sustainability had equal weight in the programme: institutional, environmental and technical, social and behavioural, financial sustainability. IRC staff members gave a total of six key note speeches in three of the four streams and led three workshops.